What Did He Mean?

In thinking about Easter and all it means today and historically while spending the day with my children and grandchild, I had time to ponder the meaning of Easter. Not just the death and resurrection of Jesus…but the real meaning of his life and death.

As a child many decades ago, even before the Civil Rights legislation, in bible school in Georgia, I remember quite vividly singing a children’s song in which the words still ring in my memory:

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

Whether you’re rich or whether you’re poor
It matters not to Him
He remembers where you’re going
Not where you’ve been

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

If your heart is troubled
Don’t worry, don’t you fret
He knows that you have heard His call
And he won’t forget

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

All around the world tonight
His children rest assured
That He will watch and He will keep us
Safe and secure

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

How can anyone claim to be a Christian while ignoring the very lyrical lessons we were taught as children to love all those who are different from ourselves in color or ethnicity or religion or whatever just as Jesus did? How can we claim to be Christians – the children of Jesus – if we do not follow the lead of Jesus in loving all the people of the world?

What else does the true meaning of Christ’s life teach if not the love “that God so loved the world (i.e., mankind) that he gave his only begotten son” for all of us. Anything less from each of us not just denies His sacrifice but denies what He came to earth to teach humanity. Jesus cared not about political parties or even about politics.

He care not about wealth or riches and like St. Francis of Assisi He cared not about the trappings of wealth or the self-glorification and ego-gratification that wealth offered.

What He did care about was teaching us to care about each other as He cared about all of us.

He cared about teaching us to love each other, regardless of our differences. For us to do less, by choosing to divide ourselves along some esoteric lines of racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, gender or other attitudes, only exhibits how less we are than in the teachings of Jesus.

Should we not strive to become more like the moral teachings exhibited in those simple childhood lyrics?